When he'd first come to Bridgehead, Spider had been very much a prisoner and had been treated like one... and he probably still was, but at least people were going to some effort to try to make him comfortable. His room was still locked at night, but it no longer looked like a cell. There were no mirrors for people to watch him through, and he'd been allowed to decorate a bit, putting up pictures of the jungle outside and being given a couple of weird-looking Earth plants that he watered carefully. His captors had stopped trying to make him wear human clothes, and during the day he could come and go at will through designated areas. It wasn't freedom, but it certainly could have been a lot worse.
He was starting to kind of enjoy his new role as teacher, too. Nobody had ever treated Spider as an authority in anything. The Omatikaya put up with him, but they would always look down on him – quite literally, as in their eyes he was the size of an eight-year-old. The humans had to look him in the eye, but they were always concerned with things Spider had never bothered trying to understand. To the recoms, on the other hand, Spider was their teacher, their guide, the guy who knew everything and could answer every question. H e had to be careful not to tell them anything that needed to stay a secret, not to drop any hints about where the Omatikaya had gone... but at the same time, he couldn't not enjoy the experience.
It was also... well, Quaritch said he wasn't the same person as Spider's human father, and maybe that was true. It was hard to say. But some days when the man smiled at him, Spider felt the closest he'd ever come in his life to having a dad.
Spider had even started to come up with little lesson plans for them, and he'd decided that this particular day – a Tuesday, which was apparently something they felt the need to keep track of – was going to be about roots. Yesterday somebody had stepped on a hollow one and broken it, setting free a colony of ten-legged scorpion-ants that were not at all happy about one of their highways being destroyed. Once they'd made their escape, Spider had explained how to recognize the tunnels and showed them another root whose milky juice would sooth the fiery itch of the scorpion-ant stings. He'd mentally made a list of other roots they ought to know about, including edible ones, medicinal ones, ones that made good twine, and ones that could wrap around unwary ankles and drag people to the ground.
He was excited enough about this that he was up right at dawn. It was still strange waking up in the city, where there was no songs from the morning tetrapters and buzzing sätsyal insects. With his head swimming with important information he wanted to impart, he washed up and gobbled his breakfast, and ran to meet the recoms at the airlock.
When he arrived, he got some bad news. Today wasn't going to be about roots after all.
He went down the steps to the quarters where the recoms lived. A couple of them were already up and around, including one drying his hair after a shower, and Quartich, who was lacing his boots. Spider started to call out kaltxì , and possibly follow it with a more specific good morning to continue improving their vocabulary, but Quaritch held up a hand to shush him. He had a com choker and earpiece on, and was talking to somebody.
"I asked around," he told the person he was speaking to. "Baxter says he'd up for it. We'll stop by at oh ten hundred and we're not staying longer than half an hour, understand? We've got important stuff to do. Over and out." He broke the connection and stood up, brushing his trousers off. "Sleep well?" he asked Spider.
His brief stint in the neurosect had given Spider weeks of nightmares, but those were fading now. It was gratifying that Quaritch cared enough to ask. "Not bad," he said. "Where are we going?"
"There's a Dr. Tham doing some experiment with the trees and he thinks he needs one of us to try to talk to them," said Quaritch. "It'll be fast."
"What kind of experiment?" asked Spider. The only thing the RDA seemed to want to do with the trees was destroy them, as they had in a two-kilometre circle around Bridgehead.
"No idea. Don't care," Quaritch told him. "We'll get it over with and get back to what we're doing."
Whatever it was, it wasn't important enough to involve everybody. Most of the recoms stayed behind to do some physical training, while only Wainfleet and Baxter climbed into the back of a chopper with Quaritch and Spider. Spider had gotten to know all the recoms' names by now. Baxter was the shortest of them, with hair that would have been curly if it had been allowed to grow, and a complicated tattoo of a striped animal across his back and shoulders, which he said was copied from one his human body had gotten in a place called Japan.
"We bringing the kid?" Wainfleet asked, pointed to Spider.
"He's got nothing to do here. I'd rather keep an eye on him," Quaritch replied.
Spider never knew what to think of statements like that. He couldn't tell if Quaritch wanted him there and was just trying to sound tough in front of his followers, or if he honestly didn't trust Spider out of his sight. Some days Spider would feel like this man really wanted to be his father, and then five minutes later Quaritch would say something so horrible that it seemed he didn't have a single molecule of kindness in his entire body, and Spider would find himself missing the Sully family so badly he could barely breathe.
Of course he understood why he couldn't have been given to them to raise like Kiri had been, why he'd never really belong with them, but... they were everything he would have wanted from a family. Mr. Sully had taught him so many things, even when Mrs. Sully didn't approve of it. Lo'ak was Spider's best friend, Neteyam was like a big brother to look up to, and Kiri...
... man , he missed Kiri. He wondered what she was doing right now. Was she worried about him? Was anybody else worried about him, or were they just glad this pesky little human was out of their hair?
The dragon thundered into the air and flew out over the jungle, and a few minutes later Spider's mood dipped again when he realized they were going to Hell's Gate. This place that had once been home was now in the middle of a huge scar of sterilized land, just like Bridgehead. Worse, the last Spider had heard, the McKoskers were still working there, and he didn't want to run into them. They'd probably tell him they'd told him he should have surrendered himself.
Luckily, it seemed nobody had thought to tell them he was coming – if they had, Nash and Mary would doubtless have been waiting to meet him. Instead, there was only a group of soldiers in dusty green fatigues waiting for them outside the base, along with one figure in a white scientist's coat. These were led by a stocky woman with straight dark hair pinned up under her cap, and small red gemstone earrings. She stepped up and saluted to Quaritch.
"Good morning, Colonel," she said. "I'm Major Jennifer Da Silva, in charge of security at Hell's Gate. And this is Dr. Nhat Tham."
The man in the white coat raised one hand in a nervous wave. He was tall but rather overweight, with a shiny shaved head. Under his lab coat, he was wearing a sweater vest in a dozen clashing colours. He looked up at the recoms, then down at Spider as if the latter's presence puzzled him – which it probably did, but he did not comment on it.
"Pleasure to meet you, will be a bigger pleasure to leave," said Quaritch. "What do you need from us?"
Major Da Silva led them into the facility, explaining on the way. It had been much expanded since the last time Spider had been there, with entire new buildings tacked onto the complex, but the place she took them to was one of the core science facilities. It had been renovated and the technology updated, but the layout was still familiar.
"We've had Tham working on the communication web in the plant life," Da Silva said.
"It's unbelievably complex," Tham told them, in good English but with a strong Vietnamese accent. "It would be several lifetimes' work to understand the chemistry alone, but Dr. Augustine was on the right track when she compared it to neurotransmitters. I've identified several..."
Da Silva cleared her throat to cut him off. "If we can learn to read it, maybe we can talk back to it and tell it to leave us alone. Even shut it down."
A pair of guards opened the door to a lab, and Da Silva showed them inside. What Spider saw there stopped him in his tracks.
The room was an ellipse, about twenty by thirty metres. The walls were lined with equipment and readouts, things Spider could probably have learned to understand if he'd ever bothered to pay attention to any of the education the McKoskers had tried to give him, but he'd never been interested. The ceiling was polycarbonate panels to let in the light of the suns for the object in the middle: a vast hydroponics tank with a tangle of ghostly white roots growing in it. They were from a dozen species of plant, at least – it looked as if somebody had just dug up a giant scoop of soil somewhere and dumped it in. Shoots were sticking out the top, curling up and winding around a metal catwalk that had been installed for observations, but cut off from the room beyond by three-inch-thick doors of bulletproof plastic. Hundreds of electrodes were reading out the activity within the plants, while a dozen white-coated scientists looked at the displays and readouts.
"We have made a bit of progress," Dr. Tham said. Once again he looked up at Quaritch, then down at Spider, then back up, but he did not actually ask what the boy was doing there, and Quaritch didn't want to volunteer the information, so Tham just went on. "Unfortunately, we don't have a lot to compare our results to, just old records of Augustine's work. That's helped a lot, but it seems like even a sample this small is capable of fairly complex activity. Just as an experiment, I would like one of you to do that plugging-in thing with it..."
"It's called tsaheylu ," Spider spoke up, but his eyes were still on the hydroponics. Apparently today was going to be about roots... just looking at it from here, he had to revise his initial estimate of a dozen up to at least twenty-five species, with symbiotic fungi still attached in places. He'd never seen roots outside soil like that except in very small batches, like in the vegetable gardens, and those didn't compare. There was something about the smooth whiteness of the surfaces, the way they seemed to be gently pulsing as if in time with a heartbeat... he wanted to touch them. He felt like if he did, he would get a tingle of electricity, maybe even a message, as if he could make a sort of tsaheylu with them himself.
"Ah, yes," said Tham. "That. We'd like to watch your brain activity while you do it, and also get a verbal description of the experience afterwards, to compare with our results."
Quaritch nodded once. "Baxter, you're up. Make this fast," he added. "Like I said, ten thirty and no later, we're out."
Tham swallowed. "Well, if this works, we were kind of hoping it would be an ongoing thing..."
"They weren't engineered to be your lab assistants, Dr. Tham," said Da Silva sourly. "You're lucky they agreed to help at all."
Baxter sat on a stool while the humans put a web of electrodes on his head, his ears twitching like an annoyed cat's when the cap brushed against them. Then then did some calibrations, having him picture a number of things: first shapes, then letters of the alphabet, then complex images like Earth animals. Spider had expected to find this whole side trip boring, but now that he was here, he couldn't stop looking up at the roots, wondering just what would happen when Baxter connected with them. He wondered if anybody else felt the same urge he did, and whether if he climbed the ladder, he'd be able to knock the door down and get inside before they could stop him.
He glanced up at Quaritch, who was leaning on the wall, chewing gum and tapping one foot impatiently. Quaritch looked back, and gave a sniff.
"You're being patient," he noted. "That's good."
That crumb of approval was enough to forestall any thoughts of leaping into action... which was, Spider thought, probably pretty pathetic.
One of the men who was working on the calibration met Spider's gaze for a moment, then leaned towards Dr. Tham and quietly asked, "what's with Tarzan?" Tham just shrugged.
Finally the scientists had their computers satisfactorily tuned to Baxter's brainwaves, and the recom was allowed to climb the ladder. Somebody pressed a button, and the door slid silently open. The catwalk itself had been made for use by humans, so Baxter had shuffle sideways between railings that only just came up past his knees. The stems and leaves rustled as he passed, as if they knew something was about to happen.
Perhaps this was the reason that Baxter stopped and looked back at Quaritch and Wainfleet. They did not react, but one of Dr. Tham's assistants called out, "you can change your mind at any time!"
"Please don't!" said Tham.
"I'm not scared of a plant, if that's what you're implying," said Baxter. He reached for a root that had draped itself over the edge of the catwalk.
The scientists had asked him to make tsaheylu with the plants, but as far as Spider could see, Baxter didn't come anywhere near it. Only his fingers made contact with the root, but there was a loud snap and a surge of electricity in the air. Spider felt his skin prickle and saw everyone's hair stand on end. Displays began to flicker, and equipment started to smoke. People cried out in surprise and dropped to the floor as if afraid of an explosion. Spider got down and covered his head.
Exactly what happened to Baxter he wasn't sure, but a moment later the man was off the catwalk and tumbling back down the ladder to land in a heap on the floor. Quaritch and Wainfleet ran forward to help him, then stopped in their tracks. Spider raised his head to try to see why, but there was now a console in the way – he grabbed a panel of it and pulled himself upright, trying to see what was going on through the smoke and sparks.
He couldn't get a good look. There were too many people in the way, including one particularly annoying woman who ran in to spray a burning panel with a fire extinguisher, throwing up a cloud of opaque mist. Alarms were going off and soldiers were urging people to leave.
In the midst of all this, Spider heard Baxter hiss like a cornered Na'vi – something none of the recoms had ever done before as far as he could remember. Spider found a nearby pipe and shimmied up it to see over the mist, and managed to catch the tail end of a struggle. Quaritch and Wainfleet were pinning Baxter to the floor with his hands behind his back, and Quaritch was holding a bloodied thorn knife of the type the Omatikaya used. Where had any of them gotten that? Spider had thought about demonstrating how to make them, but hadn't done so yet.
The woman with the fire extinguisher tugged on Spider's ankle. "We have to leave!" she said. "The ceiling's been destabilized, we're going to lose atmosphere containment. Everybody but the recoms needs to get out!"
Spider hissed at her, and she stumbled backwards, shocked.
"Get him down," ordered Da Silva, in the middle of putting on a rebreather. "Taze him if you have to!"
That made Spider think twice. He'd been tazed before. It wasn't the worst thing the RDA had done to him but it wasn't far short. He dropped to the ground and joined the staff evacuating the room. Everybody crowded out into the hallway beyond, and when the display indicated there were no more humans inside, emergency pressure doors rolled shut behind them.
Security and medical personnel were waiting outside to see if everyone were okay. Each person who'd left the room was scanned and asked a few questions, including Spider, and then they were escorted to the mess hall to wait for whatever was going to come back.
Like the rest of the base, the mess hall had been updated, but it was still very familiar, and being back in there was weird. Spider had spent as much of his childhood outdoors as possible, but an awful lot of it had also been spent in this room, running around and getting in the way of people who were trying to work. There'd been a couple of other human kids at the base that he'd sometimes spent time with, but even indoors a lot of it had been with the Sullys. He remembered sitting on this floor with Lo'ak and Kiri when they'd all been quite young, with Dr. Spellman teaching them to play Go Fish...
"Spider?"
Spider turned around, and found Mary McKosker staring at him. Her hair was a shade greyer than when he'd last seen her a year ago, but other than that she looked exactly like Spider remembered, right down to her favourite flower-shaped earrings and shade of lipstick. For a moment she didn't seem like she knew how to react to finding him there, but then she ran up to give him a hug.
"Oh, my god," she said. "You're all right! I've been worried about you." After squeezing him tight for a few long seconds, she stood back at arm's length to look him over. "Nash!" she called. "It's Spider!"
A man who'd been talking with others at one of the dining tables stood up, his mouth open in surprise when he saw that his wife was right. "It is! We didn't expect to ever see you again! What are you doing back here?" He, too, was unchanged. A little balder, maybe, but the same bristly moustache, the same cigarette stains on his fingers.
"I'm here with... I'm here with Quaritch," said Spider. They weren't going to shout at him? He wasn't sure what to do with that.
"Him?" Nash sniffed. "What's he want with you?"
"Maybe he sees a second chance to be a father," Mary suggested, a bit reproachful.
Spider looked around the room, hoping the recoms had reappeared and he could find out what was going on, but there was no sign of them.
There was Da Silva, though. She noticed Spider, and made her way through the crowd towards them. "Do you two know this boy?" she asked.
"We raised him," said Nash, and then gave Spider a sideways look. "We tried to, anyway."
"Really?" Da Silva was honestly surprised, but then relieved. "Good. You can keep him. One less thing for me to worry about." She turned to leave again.
"Wait!" Spider protested. "What happened in there?"
"Nothing you need to know about!" she told him, and disappeared into the crowd.
Mary squeezed Spider's shoulder. "Come on," she said. "Let's go home. I'm dying to know what you've been up to, honestly. We were terrified you'd get yourself killed out there."
'Home' was the McKoskers' quarters, which was surreal. This was the same room Spider had slept in for his entire childhood. Like everything else, it had been remodelled a bit, with all the electronics in it pulled out and replaced with newer technology, and new furniture to replace the shabby old stuff. Spider's own bunk, however, had been left exactly the way he remembered it, with the photographs of him and his friends on the wall above, and a wooden wind chime Spider had made dangling beside it.
"I'd ask you to put some clothes on," said Nash, "but I know you're not gonna do that."
"Sit down," Mary urged. "You want something to eat?"
She made him a sandwich and poured a glass of juice, and set them in front of him on the table, Nash turned on some of the twanging country music he liked, and Spider had to fight the urge to check and make sure he wasn't suddenly six years old again. He might have felt better if they'd been angry with him for going with the Omatikaya instead of staying with them – this attempt to just get back to normal made him feel as if he'd slipped into an alternate universe.
"What have you been doing?" Mary asked. "We keep hearing about all the fighting going on, but nobody ever mentions you."
"I can't tell you," said Spider firmly.
"We're not going to..." Mary began, then paused and looked around the room. Spider had only been thinking that if he let something slip without thinking, one or other of the McKoskers might pass it on, even if they, too, meant no harm. When he saw her do that, however, he realized the room was almost certainly under surveillance. Just because the RDA had offered amnesty to anyone at Hell's Gate who surrendered, didn't mean they trusted them.
"Okay," she said. "Well, then. We've been working as best we can. It's been an uphill battle trying to fit in, but there's no need to worry about limited resources anymore. And Nash and I talked about it and we decided..." Mary glanced at her husband, and he nodded. "We decided that if you came back, we wanted to try again. It wasn't right for either of us to make you bear our frustrations. We're sorry, and we want to try to be a family."
The statement sounded rehearsed, and Spider realized it probably was. It was probably something she'd repeated in a mirror until she'd memorized it, and even if the words were recited by rote, her face was earnest. She really did want to apologize. But they'd spent his whole childhood shouting at him for things that weren't his fault and acting like he was in the way... and he was just supposed to forgive them for that?
"I don't think I'm staying," he said. "I'll be leaving with Quaritch."
Mary swallowed. "All right," she said. "If you change your mind, you're always welcome here."
Perhaps that should have been the moment Spider got up and left, but the PA crackled, and announcement came on that science operations had been suspended for the remainder of the afternoon. Da Silva's distorted voice stated that everyone was encouraged to remain in their quarters, and supper would be provided at six thirty. Spider realized she had probably told the recoms he'd gone with the McKoskers, so this was where Quaritch would look for him when it was time to go. That meant he was stuck.
The afternoon passed in awkward silence. Nash and Mary both had projects they were working on, and both actually did look more relaxed than Spider could ever remember seeing them. Mary typed with a focus that seemed quite foreign to somebody who remembered her as twitchy and easily distracted, while Nash was actually whistling along to his music as he ran simulations. They'd argued that life would be far easier if they surrendered to the RDA and accepted the offer of pardon. Maybe they'd been right, at least for themselves.
Spider would have liked to have a proper family, but the McKoskers weren't the family he wanted. No matter what Mary said now, he suspected that if he stayed, a month from now everything would be just as it had been, everyone shouting at each other and trying to make him conform. Quaritch didn't do that... but each scrap of affection from Quaritch was like a thrown bone, something tossed his way to make him shut up and cooperate. Why couldn't he have a family like the Sullys? Did Kiri have any idea how lucky she was that they'd taken her in?
As time crawled on, Spider played a couple of video games, but quickly remembered why he'd lost interest in them. It was no fun going through a simulation of running and jumping when it was possible to go outside and do it for real. He sorted through the cupboards and found a bunch of his old toys, and wondered what to think of the fact that Mary had kept them. Had they really spent the past year hoping he'd show up again, planning what they would say and do when he did? And if they had... why didn't that make him want to forgive them?
Supper was indeed delivered at six thirty – rice with stir-fried vegetables and dumplings. A woman in fatigues dropped off the meal and Nash thanked her and would have closed the door right away, but Spider put his arm in the way, and tried to ask questions.
"What happened in the lab today?" he wanted to know.
"It's classified," the woman replied. "Even I don't know."
"Where are the recoms?" Spider tried. "Are they still here?"
"I don't know," she repeated. "They've got the labs locked down, nobody's allowed in or out."
"Does Quaritch know where I am?"
"I don't know, young man, I just work here."
After dinner, Nash and Mary sat down to watch a news broadcast. Spider hung around for a while, hoping for more information, but it didn't talk about anything having happened at Hell's Gate. Instead, the report focused on recent guerilla attacks by the surrounding clans, and then moved on to sports scores and a weather report. Spider gave up. He took a shower, because he might as well and it would kill fifteen minutes, and then went to bed early. He hoped Quaritch hadn't left without him, and wondered whether they'd be going in the morning. It probably depended on exactly how badly Baxter had been injured. Quaritch was... he was a lot of things, but he didn't like leaving people behind.
The blue numbers on the digital clock said it was two in the morning when the comm panel beeped.
Spider opened his eyes and took a moment to remember where he was – back in the bed he'd slept in as a child at Hell's Gate. He heard the beep again, and turned his head, frowning. Like every bed in the complex, Spider's had a personal comm built into the wall next to it. This had been replaced with a newer version but it was still in the same spot. He'd only been here a day, though, and the only people he knew were the McKoskers, who lived here. Why would anybody be calling him?
He reached out and pressed the button. A view of the hallway outside flickered into place, but there was nobody visible – just a hand-made sign that said TARZAN.
One of the scientists had called Spider that when he'd asked Tham about him. Spider rolled silently out of bed, and crept to the apartment door. Years of practice in the woods had made him able to walk without making a sound. He pressed the button and let the door slide back a crack, but only just far enough for him to per out before he stopped it.
At first he saw only the same sign, but then it rose a little to reveal Dr. Tham, still dressed in the same clothes he'd been wearing later – white coat over colourful sweater vest and a light green button-down shirt. His eyes were shadowed as if he had not slept.
"Oh, good," he said. "I want to talk to you."
Spider opened the door a little further so he could fit his face in the crack. "Why?" he asked. Spider was nobody to this man.
"Because I think you're the only person here who might not rat me out," Tham replied. He didn't try to get inside. Instead he kept his sign between himself and the camera, and leaned in to talk quietly. "I need somebody to help me with the experiment."
"The experiment that blew up?" said Spider. "Why do you want to do that again?"
"Because I don't know what it did," Tham said. "Something happened to that man, but they won't let me talk to him and they've locked me out of the system. I can get back in from the lab, but I need somebody to help me, and everybody I've asked has told me I'm crazy. You're that kid who grew up in the woods with the natives, right? You know what this planet is capable of better than anyone."
The image of himself climbing up and touching the roots danced in front of Spider's eyes again, and his heart beat a little faster. But this man seemed to want something Spider couldn't offer him. "I don't know what happened today," he said.
"But you want to. I saw the way you watched," said Tham.
"What do you need me to do?"
"The door's on security lock," Tham explained. "It can only be opened by two keys at once. Then once we're in, a separate override needs to be entered to get me access to the data. I've stolen the password, and I've got Da Silva's retinal scan to enter it." He pulled a pair of goggles out of a pocket of his coat. "But then I'll need one more favour – I'll give you a copy of everything we download, and if I'm caught I want you to guard it with your life until you can give it to my ex-wife at Bridgehead. Her name is Charlotte Huynh. She's a cell biologist. Do you think you can try to do that?"
"Yes," Spider decided. "I do."
"Good," said Tham. He reached under his shirt and pulled out a folded lab coat and a blue beanie hat. "Put these on. You're, um... rather distinctive looking."
The coat was too small, and having his dreadlocks stuffed under the hat was uncomfortable, but Spider obeyed, and followed Tham back to the lab. There were very few people out and about at this time of night, but the scientist was still twitchy, sucking air through his teeth at every tiny sound.
Fortunately, nobody interrupted them. The lab door had a strip of red light all around it, and a message on the inset screen that it was closed and the air inside was not breathable. Tham took a pair of emergency rebreathers out of a compartment in the wall and handed one to Spider, then gave him a card key.
"In the slot on the far side on three," he said. "One... two... three!"
They slid the keys in. There was a clunk, and the outer blast doors opened. The two men entered the space and let them close again, and then waited for the atmosphere to exchange. The inner doors slid out of the way, and Tham pulled his mask into place over the goggles with the stolen retinal scan.
"Wait here," he said, and chose the least-damaged of the consoles.
Spider waited in the doorway. The lights were off, but the planet and moons were shining in brightly through the windows in the ceiling, and by their glow Spider could see that the lab was still in the same shambles the incident that morning had left it in. Consoles were broken and partially taken apart, screens sagging after being slightly melted, with some partially buried in mounds of solidified firefighting foam. In the middle was the tank of plant material, pulsing softly with bioluminescence.
Dr. Tham was muttering to himself in a foreign language as he tried to bring things up on the computer. He wasn't looking at Spider. Spider licked his lips, and crossed to the ladder.
He climbed up with the same practised, soundless motion as he'd gotten out of bed, and when he reached the top, he found the door was broken and swinging freely on its hinges. Spider slipped through and walked out to the middle of the catwalk. The foliage began to move, just as it had when Baxter had passed over it earlier, and the pulses sped up. From the side the glow had looked random, but from here Spider could see it was making spreading circles, like drops in a pond... like the grass around Kiri when she Did The Thing.
Kiri ought to be here, he thought. This was clearly a job for her , not for him. Kiri would have known exactly what had happened earlier, although she might not have been willing to tell anybody about it. She would much more likely insist that this sample needed to be taken back to the forest and reunited with Eywa.
Spider realized that the centre of each spreading circle was exactly below where he was standing. Had he just happened to stop there, or were the plants aware of him?
"Hey!" exclaimed Dr. Tham. Spider turned to find the man staring right through the holo-display he'd managed to bring up, right at him. "What are you doing?" the man hissed. "Get down from there!"
The thought occurred to Spider that if he were going to touch it, he had to do so now. He looked down. One of the curling white roots had wrapped around a railing ballister... that was the one Baxter had grabbed. It had beads of light flickering up and down it, not unlike the branches of the sacred tree. With Dr. Tham still urging him to come down, Spider reached out and made contact with it.
It was only a quick touch, a split second. He had time to take in the fact that it was surprisingly warm, and buzzing slightly with internal energy...
... and then the world turned inside-out.